OK,

Another confusing question in the laptop purchase has arisen; 32 bit versus 64 bit. Now I understand that 64 bit can process data twice as fast as 32 bit and also utilise more RAM (32 bit limited to about 3.3GB I understand). However, what are the other issues ?

I don't know if the presumed extra expense is worth it ? or does it just create problems ?

Then there is the Vista issue. If we go 64 bit then is Vista 64 ok or just out there for the teckies ?

Just when I thought I'd cracked it another issue comes up.

Any help much appreciated. (Don't really want to have to ditch this laptop in 12/24 months because programs won't run on it).

Sorry, finally which version of Vista ? If 32 bit then Home premium / Ultimate ? how do you decide ?

Edited September 9, 200817 yr by torrenova

OK,

Another confusing question in the laptop purchase has arisen; 32 bit versus 64 bit. Now I understand that 64 bit can process data twice as fast as 32 bit and also utilise more RAM (32 bit limited to about 3.3GB I understand). However, what are the other issues ?

I don't know if the presumed extra expense is worth it ? or does it just create problems ?

Then there is the Vista issue. If we go 64 bit then is Vista 64 ok or just out there for the teckies ?

Just when I thought I'd cracked it another issue comes up.

Any help much appreciated. (Don't really want to have to ditch this laptop in 12/24 months because programs won't run on it).

Sorry, finally which version of Vista ? If 32 bit then Home premium / Ultimate ? how do you decide ?

Okay as I understand most new laptops now comes with 64 bit processor like AMD Turion64 X2 which is the one I ahve in my Asus but I chose to install Vista 32bit because there are few apps right now thats capable of utilizing 64bit and you'll just end up looking for a 64bit version of your favorite applications. So for now, you can purchase a 64bit laptop, install a 32bit Vista Ultimate (I suggest XP if you have 1GB of Ram or less).

The 64 bit version of Vista is faster than the 32 bit version and the price is the same. It's worth using the 64 bit version if you can. Don't buy Ultimate, its not worth it (I have it!). The business version is much better value.

If cost is an issue the OEM version (sold in white cardboard boxes) is about half the cost of the 'full retail' version in the nice plastic case (I'm not sure if you can migrate them to another computer later on though).

You can buy a 64bit hardware (laptop) and install either a 32bit operating system, such as WinXP, Win Vista or Linux etc. or a 64 bit system, such as those mentioned before.

As another poster said, it is NOT true, you can install 32 bit software on your 64bit operating systems, but certainly you cannot do other way round, i.e. installing 64bit software on your 32bit operating system.

So getting 64bit hardware (laptop) or software (Win Vista) would always be an advantage over 32bit as you can always use 32bit software and programs on them.

I have WinXP 32bit, Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit and Ubuntu 8.04 64bit (Linux). All of them are working fine. I will soon install Mac OSX on the same machine too.

OK,

Another confusing question in the laptop purchase has arisen; 32 bit versus 64 bit. Now I understand that 64 bit can process data twice as fast as 32 bit and also utilise more RAM (32 bit limited to about 3.3GB I understand). However, what are the other issues ?

A 64 bit processor will not process things 2x times as fast as a 32 bit processor. However, it will address more RAM. Currently with 32 bit addressing you can only fit all of the available memory in 2^32 (4 gigs). So all of the memory on your video card and other places needs to fit inside that addressing area. So instead of not addressing important stuff like video card memory, it just doesn't address main memory.

If you do get Vista and install it with SP1; don't believe it if it says you have 4 GB of memory. It will report it, but can not address it.

I don't know if the presumed extra expense is worth it ? or does it just create problems ?

AFAIK, there are no consumer CPU (with the exception of the VIA and those used in the eee PC) that I know of. So there is no extra expense involved. Also of note is that those '64' bit processors aren't true 64 bit processors a la the Itanium or Sparc64 but rather just have 64 bit registers tacked on.

Then there is the Vista issue. If we go 64 bit then is Vista 64 ok or just out there for the teckies ?

Just when I thought I'd cracked it another issue comes up.

Any help much appreciated. (Don't really want to have to ditch this laptop in 12/24 months because programs won't run on it).

Sorry, finally which version of Vista ? If 32 bit then Home premium / Ultimate ? how do you decide ?

Of all the Vista's I believe that the Home Premium is the best bet. It includes Media Centre which is a pretty nifty program to handle your various media files.